﻿We are a coalition of families residing in the Oakland hills who do not want the forests where we live, which we cherish for their spectacular beauty and the vital animal habitat they provide to our wild neighbors, and which are the very reason we chose to live here to be destroyed by ﻿our public officials. We also do not want our families – ourselves, our children, our pets – and the multitudes of animals who reside in the hills to be repeatedly exposed to hazardous, carcinogenic chemicals that will threaten our health and well-being. ﻿ In fighting the plan to replace the forests of the East Bay hills with grassland, we share the views of the thousands upon thousands of citizens who likewise voiced their opposition to this proposal to the federal agency, FEMA, when it was debating federal funding. During that process, over 13,000 people spoke out against the plan, 90% of them opposed. Public hearings about the plan resulted in standing room only crowds speaking out against the proposed devastation, all of which went ignored and unheeded by our local officials who forged ahead with the plan anyway despite intense public opposition. On the East Bay Regional Parks District website, General Manager Robert Doyle admits that public opposition and money stand in the way of his plan to clear cut the forests of the East Bay hills and turn them into nothing but grassland. In other words, Doyle and his colleagues on the Board of the EBRPD had to concoct a plan to substitute their own will over the public’s will whom they are supposed to represent. Indeed, overcoming public resistance in one of the most environmentally conscious areas of the country to the idea that decimating numerous healthy forests, cutting down hundreds of thousands of carbon sequestering trees, displacing multitudes of wildlife and spreading thousands of gallons toxic chemicals where both animals and people live is a sound idea, consistent with an environmental ethos that has historically been associated with the antithesis of such actions, is a challenge. And yet they have already received the green light and funding to do just that by falsely claiming their goal is fire abatement and will begin implementing their environmentally catastrophic plan to eliminate our forests at the end of Summer. Please help us speak for the trees and the people of the East Bay who love and cherish our beautiful forests and want to preserve them for future generations and the animals who call the habitat created by those trees their home.